Detroit City Blues

I thought about setting him on fire. I didn’t know how I would do it, but it was the most horrible thing I could think of to do to him.

It’s been a little over a year since Mom married Edgar, and I will tell you that it has not been the best year of my life. Mom said he would be fun to have around, that he would probably take us fishing and to ball games and stuff. Dean said don’t count on that, but I was kind of hoping for it anyway, especially the fishing part. I am pretty sure now he doesn’t even like us, maybe even hates us.

On their first anniversary – Mom wanted to have a special dinner. She had made a red velvet cake and cooked a meatloaf. We were all there; Gramma and Pops too. It started off kind of wrong, and it was my fault I guess.

Edgar does this weird thing with his eyes that me and Dean hate; the eyeball thing. The Stink Eye. I mean we hate it a lot, but at the same time we like to see him do it. Like lions screwing on Wild Kingdom. Makes you sick but you can’t stop watching. It’s kind of a blink but when he does it his eyelids flutter and all you can see is the whites of his eyeballs. He does it when you ask him a question he can’t answer or when he is trying to explain something to you or when you do something he doesn’t like. He does it when he is lying. In other words, he does it a lot.

At dinner, I figured a good way to get him started would be to say grace, so I asked if I could. Gramma gave me a pleased-surprised look and said “Why, Mason honey! Bless your heart. You go ahead.” I folded my hands and real serious said “Good Lord good food good meat let’s eat, and protect us from Satan.” before Mom or Gramma could stop me. It was stupid and funny, and Edgar didn’t understand it at all. Sure as shit I got the stink eye from him. Dean looked at me over the mashed potatoes and we both started laughing that kind of laugh where nobody else knows what you’re laughing at and the more we laughed the more Edgar did the stink eye and was getting all red in the face. Finally we calmed down but Edgar wasn’t about to let that go, once he figured out that we were laughing at him.

Mom was in the kitchen cutting the cake. He waited until she came and held up a glass of beer and looking right at us said “Here’s to one year of marriage and two years of great sex.” That just isn’t something you say in front of your wife’s family, like they weren’t there. It was too much for Dean.

“Shut your fucking face, Edgar.”

Next thing I saw was Edgar lean across the table and take a swipe at Dean and connect with a kind of a slap punch on Deans left cheek. Dean grabbed Edgar’s wrist with his left hand and pulled him down toward the table, stood up and blasted Edgar right in the beezer. It was wonderful. Edgar fell to the floor, crashing a bunch of shit off the table and just lay there flopping around twitching a little bit and his left arm was flopping back and forth like he was trying to pull something off his nose, which I was pretty sure Dean broke.

Uncle Mark, my real dad’s brother had been in the US Army over in Germany. He killed a German soldier one day who was just sitting around eating lunch. The story goes that Uncle Mark came up on him and said the only German words he knew, “Mach Schnell” or something like that; the German soldier went for his pistol and Uncle Mark shot him twice in the chest with his Garand. He still has that guy’s helmet. It has “Wolf” scratched inside the back neck protector that the Kraut helmets had. He told me the way you can tell that a guy is dead is if he is still twitching. Wounded guys just lay there real still. But I guess he was wrong about that because pretty soon Edgar started to moan and swear.

“Goddam you Dean. Youdun it dis time. You definadly craught the line. You will regret dis til da day you die.”

As he talked bubbles of blood and snot were coming out of his nose. I think it was pretty much dumb luck that Dean connected that hard. He’s really not much of a fighter, but I know he did study up on it some after Goose Schneider kicked his ass last day freshman year. He wasn’t going to let that happen again. Edgar was on his elbow, trying to get up. My Mom dropped the cake and came running around the table to Edgar.

“Dean! Edgar! Dean, what have you done! Daddy! Mother! Oh, Edgar!”

It was like she didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. Finally she went to the fridge and cracked open an aluminum tray of ice cubes and wrapped a dish towel around them. I just stood there hoping that Edgar didn’t have any more fight left in him, which he didn’t.

Gramma was already wiping up the blood spatters on the floor and the kitchen cabinets. Mom knelt down next to Edgar and was holding the ice on his nose, saying “Oh my baby, my poor baby.”

“Looks like a murder happened here. My Lord.” was all Gramma said.

My grandfather was standing in the doorway, just looking things over. With two fingers on his right hand he motioned for me to come over to him. I did.

“I think a tactical retreat is in order here, boy. Make yourself scarce.”

“Right, Pops.” I said.

It was because of that when school let out for summer, Edgar had Dean sent to South Dakota to live with Uncle Mark.

“It’s either that or jail, tough guy. I swear to God I will file charges on your ass.”

Mom said it would be good for Dean to have a “season or two on the ranch to get his bearings”. I thought his bearings were just fine; there was never anybody in my life I would rather be like than Dean. I wanted to go with him, but he said no way; that I should stay around to help Mom just in case things didn’t work out with Edgar and her. And when Pops retired from the post office, him and Gramma moved to Fort Lauderdale. So it was me, Mom and Edgar in the house on Beresford St.

As much as I’d like to, I can’t really blame everything on Edgar. Things had pretty much went south the year before. That was my freshman year. School started off pretty good; I got Miss Costigan for home room, and had over $300 saved from my Free Press route and mowing lawns. And Kennedy hadn’t been shot yet. After that it seemed like nothing was the same. There was no rock and roll on CKLW for a month, and Miss Costigan said that things weren’t going to get back to normal for a while, with Johnson in office.

I was not looking forward to Christmas vacation; to being around the house. It was a white Christmas, with lots of snow, which was good for shoveling walks and picking up some cash. Bitter cold days, the wind biting and finding every opening in my gloves and parka but I was out every day delivering my papers or shoveling somebody’s walk. I liked my route, though. Every customer had their own preference for how they wanted their paper deliveredstuffed in the mail box, just put between the storm door and the inner door. Some people like the Phelps wanted me to ring the bell and hand them the paper. It slowed me down, but it paid off. I got really good Christmas tips that year.

After that, the holidays were crap; the plant where Mom worked, “The Rouge”, was on shut down for a line re-build and she spent Christmas Eve and most of Christmas Day moping and sitting in front of the TV watching Bishop Sheen or Perry Como with a Kessler’s and water in her hand. Edgar, when he wasn’t working or walking around the house in his underwear bellowing about this or that was down at The Library drinking with his other loser pals from the A & P.

Me and Dean didn’t mind not having a tree or getting any presents from them. All our presents that year came from Gramma and Pops. Soft stuff mostly; flannel shirts, socks, underwear. I got a card with a ten dollar bill stuck in the little slot and Pops gave Dean a three bladed pen knife with a yellow pearl handle. “A gentleman’s knife, Dean.” the card said.

I made Mom a little wooden hot plate in shop. Nothing really, a wood disc cut from a piece of Birdseye maple with a wood-burned flower on it, and then all I did was write “Mom” on it with the wood-burner in like an old English style writing. But it was pretty cool. I didn’t get Edgar anything.

New Year’s 1964 came and went, and Mom was excited to get back to the plant on January second. But when I got home from doing papers she was crying on the phone with her pal Vicky. They had pink-slipped her. Her and Vicky. All in all about seven hundred people were shit canned. Then she got all determined and would pinch her lips together stamp her feet and push her hands on the kitchen counter like she was testing it to see if she could move it.

“Boys, this is only temporary”, she said. “I’ve got some unemployment union money coming in, and I’ll find work on Woodward Avenue at an ad agency as an illustrator, or for a department store drawing fashion sketches.”

But day by day she came home more discouraged and disgusted. She would take off her coat and snap off her rubbers from her high heels and pour herself a Kessler and water. The interviews were hideous, she said, flopping on the old gray sofa. The old men interviewing her were leches who stared at her boobs and hardly looked at her drawings and sketch portfolio. Nobody cared about real artwork or fashion, she said. All they wanted was cartoons. And she would pour herself a couple fingers of Kessler’s on ice cubes, and swirl the cubes around with her index finger.

“Honey, freshen this for me would you. Just a little water. Thank you baby.” I did, but I didn’t like it.
It will remain forever a mystery to me exactly why this kind of shit happens. No matter what you do, you know something bad is going to happen once in a while. You can count on it. You’re going to lose your wallet, or your English report, or Paul Delamater is going to steal some of your papers at the substation while you are folding. Hopefully nothing really bad happens, like Tony Del Veccio last year falling off the overpass. But he was just stupid to be walking actually on the rail. I didn’t see it happen. I guess he had done it before. Most of us walked on the concrete part with our legs wrapped around the rail itself. That was scary enough. At first it was just something you had to do when you were new, to pull papers out of our substation. The older carriers made you do it. Then it got to be something that some guys got a kick out of and would dare each other to do it, just to be cool. Now, since Tony got killed they put up a wire fence and nobody can walk the over pass at all.

But Jesus. Godammit. I shouldn’t swear, but it helps. I don’t know why all this shit has to happen at once. It was that March. April. What difference does it make? OK, let’s just say April. The cruelest month is what Mr. Eliot called it. I remember that from English class. Now that I think of it, makes sense it would go back to that month. Three months after she got laid off. And that’s when she met Edgar, probably the worst thing to ever happen to us.

Edgar. Where did he come from? One Saturday a couple years ago he was just here, standing on the porch with a beat up yellow suitcase. My mom introduced us with pride, saying she just knew we would get along “famously”. She hugged me and pulled me in close and said in my ear, “He is going to be so good for us, darlin’. Your Momma needs this. You’ll understand.” You don’t have to be Carnac the Magnificent to know that wasn’t going to happen. But there he was.

I knew something was up; her not coming home on Friday’s the last few weeks. It was not hard to imagine how it went though. Friday night out with “The Librarians” as they called themselves, her and Vicky, another other single girl laid off from The Rouge. Hanging out down at the Library Lounge. Skinny Vicky gets quarters from the bartender for the table, racks and breaks. Mom sits at a table with one hand at her cheek and flips a dangly gold earring back and forth. She peels the label off her Miller High Life. She taps cigarettes from the pack of Raleigh’s Vicky left at the table. Gets up and dances to fast songs with Vicky. She wants to be noticed, wants to know that she is still desirable. There’s been nobody since Dad’s been gone.

Edgar, he’s watching her from the bar. On the lookout for some poontang. No wedding ring. Nice tits, he thinks. I bet he looks at himself in the mirror to check out his hair, which he combs into a black pompadour, frozen in Brylcreem. Twists his shoulders back and forth and looks in the mirror to see if his arms look too skinny; rolls his sleeves down, then back up, halfway. He gets a whiff of soured sweat from his armpits. He sets his glass down and makes a quick trip to the men’s room where there is a cologne dispenser, three squirts for a dollar. Comes back to his drink at the bar.

His moves I am sure were dickless. Probably said something stupid about her being alone and not having to be. Something like that. You wanna dance he’d say when a slow song came on. And she, after two or three beers and shots of Kessler’s and help from Vicky (Oh, he got a nice smile, Marie.) leaves with him.

When she called that night Johnny Carson was just about to come on. I was asleep on the couch. It was to let me know she was a little drunk and was going to stay at Vicky’s. Too drunk to drive but OK; would I mind getting my own breakfast and “I’ll be home about noon, honey. You are the sweetest baby boy a momma could ever have. The absolute sweetest.”

She called the next Friday, and the Friday after that. By then I kind of had it figured out she wasn’t staying at Vicky’s and when I heard a guy’s voice in the background saying “Come on Marie get your ass in gear.” there was no doubt left in my mind. I just hoped whoever it was with her used a rubber. Me and Dean sure didn’t need a baby around here to take care of too.

The Saturday Edgar showed up I was sitting at the kitchen table tracing the pattern on the Formica with my finger, waiting for her to come home. I had just found out I had been cut from baseball JV and wasn’t feeling real great about that. Dean had got pissed at me that morning too. He was leaving for work at D’Amato’s and he wasn’t supposed to go before Mom got home. I reminded him that.

“Big fucking deal.” he said. “She’s out all night with some guy screwing her brains out in Dad’s car and you’re gonna squeal on me? To her? What’s she gonna do? Spank me?”

But I didn’t say anything. I looked down and evened out the cuffs on my jeans. I was glad I had on my black tee shirt. It always made me feel good to have that on. I just wanted her to get home so I could get down to the substation to get my papers, which always came early on Saturday.

I heard the car, Dad’s car; pull in before I saw it. I jumped up and looked out the kitchen window but Mom and whoever was with her were out of the car already. When I saw him I thought “what now?” I could hear them coming up the front steps onto the porch. Her and Edgar.

He looked like an OK guy. Black wavy hair with a kind of corny pompadour and a chipped front tooth when he smiled. Grey gabardine slacks that had been ironed too many times and scuffed up black loafers. But there was something about the way he leaned toward me, like he wanted to get at me and mom was kind of holding him back.

“Mason, I want you to meet Edgar, honey. He’s going to be staying with us.”

She looked real happy and pretty. She had on her pink capri pants. Her blouse was open at the top two buttons and the collar was turned up, and she had this gauzy little scarf tied around her neck.

“How you doin’ kiddo?” Edgar said, and stuck out his hand. When I went to shake it, he poked me in the stomach. It caught me off guard and really hurt.

“Head’s up kiddo! You got to be heads up! Don’t you teach this kiddo anything, Marie?”

Then he picked up his suitcase and walked into the house, laughing his ass off.

Edgar worked at Churchill’s A & P Food Store until he got fired for stealing booze. He wore a nametag that said “Hi, I’m Edgar!” and under that “Assistant Produce Manager”. Sometimes I would put the nametag on at night and walk around our room like I was drunk, and say “Hi, I’m Edgar. I work for the A & Poo Feed Store. Lesh have a drink!” Dean would crack up.

With Edgar it seemed like we were always in conflict over something. Like the time that we were coming out of A & P carrying boxes full of dented can goods and old macaroni that Edgar said were “surplus”.

“Lazy man’s load, Dean. You got a lazy man’s load there.” Edgar said.

Dean had packed way too much into one of them flat cut-open boxes and about half way across the parking lot the bottom fell out and cans rolled all over. Edgar was on him like ugly on ape, hollering that Dean would have to pay him back “for every damn can”, even though he was actually stealing them, and then picked up a can of creamed corn and drew back like he was going to hit Dean with it. I believe he would have if I hadn’t come up with my mostly empty box and started to put all the spilt cans in mine. This pissed Edgar off so much that instead of hitting Dean he winged the can across the parking lot and it skidded right in front of a young guy and his wife going into the store. “Easy there, buddy.” the young guy said. Edgar didn’t say nothing but stormed back to the car and opened the trunk, and stood there glaring at us.

Dean and me just muled the stuff back to the car. I felt a bunch of little explosions in my heart. I was pretty sure I would never have seen my real dad throw shit in the A & P parking lot.

Edgar got in and slammed the door. His hands were shaking so bad that he couldn’t get the key into the ignition. “Goddammit! Goddammit! He kept saying. I just shut up and tried not to laugh, not because I thought it was so funny, but because I was scared. Finally he reached under the seat and took out a half pint of something in a brown paper bag. He glared at me like I was some kind of communist or something and said “You tell your mother and so help me God, Mason, you’re dead. I mean it.” He took a long pull on whatever was in the bottle and sighed. The bottle went back under the seat and he sat there another minute or two, eyes closed and breathing hard. With one final Goddammit! the car started and he wheeled out onto Brush Street banging a grocery cart halfway across the parking lot.

I reached over to turn on the radio, thinking that a little music or maybe if the Tigers were on, that would distract him.

“Don’t you put any of that jungle music on, goddammit!”

Jungle music. I never heard him say that before. I couldn’t help myself: I let out a kind of snort and turned to look out the window so he couldn’t see me smiling.

“Look at me! Go ahead, laugh you little fucker! Think it’s funny? I’ll have you laughing out of the side of your face!”

We had pulled out of the parking lot and were turning onto John R. I looked over at him and saw that in his rage his new dentures had dropped out and he was trying to get them back in. I lost it. I could not help myself. Edgar was driving with his left hand and trying to put his uppers back in his mouth between swings at me with his right hand. Sideswiping a car on the narrow street with cars parked on both sides was, I suppose, inevitable.

I was actually surprised that he stopped. It didn’t take long for Stosh to come off his front porch with that universal male palms-up-arms-extended-shoulder-shrug that means ‘what the fuck are you doing?’ and stand next to the driver’s door, looking at Edgar. As I got out of the car and headed down John R, I could hear Edgar, at once plaintive and defensive, blaming “that little prick” for distracting him.

When I got home I saw that Edgar was already there; the Ford was in the driveway with a flat tire and the driver’s side fender hanging by the headlight. Mom was in the kitchen, No surprise, she was crying. Edgar was sitting at the kitchen table. Flipping through an old copy of “Argosy”. Drinking a Stroh’s and flipping through the magazine.

“Well, there’s the little funny man now! Did you see the damage to the car? That’s your fault little funny man. And you are going to pay for the entire repair.”

It was then I saw that he had the cigar box that I kept my Free Press dough in, and taking the bills out was flipping through the $300 I had saved.

“Yes sir, the entire goddamm repair!”

I figured that since it was really my dad’s car, I didn’t mind so much. I mean, I knew Edgar was a thief now too.

One Saturday in April (that month again) mom got married. I walked past her room that morning and saw at her dressing table in the blue silk gown with dragons on it that Dad had sent her from Okinawa, putting on her make up. Dean was at work already at D’Amato’s and I checked that Edgar was gone too before I went and sat on the little upholstered bench next to Mom. She looked at me and tapped my nose with her powder puff and said “How’s my baby boy this morning?”

“Where’s Edgar?”

I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t around before I settled down too much.

“Today’s a special day. He’s out getting the Ford washed. Me and Edgar’s going downtown today to make it official. We’re going to get married.”

I watched in the mirror as she put on her lipstick and blotted it with a tissue between her lips. She rolled her lips back over her teeth and bent down with an “mm-wah” and planted a kiss on my cheek. She smelled like apple blossoms and I almost cried when her blue eyes looked right at me and she said, “Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Does Dean know?”

It was a moment that Dean and I had dreaded for months. “At least they’re not married.” Dean would say as we lay in bed at night. “We could wake up one morning and he could be solid gone. There’s always that hope.”

“No, Dean doesn’t know. We’ll tell him later when he gets off work.”

“I hate Edgar.”

I thought about setting him on fire. I didn’t know how I would do it, but it was the most horrible thing I could think of to do to him. Dean had told me one time that some guys from Highland Park; he didn’t know them but he knew some guys who did, had set a stray cat on fire and watched it run through a playground filled with little kids. The story haunted me for months, the cruelty of it, the act itself above and beyond anything I dreamed humans capable of. And now I was thinking of doing it to Edgar.

“You do not.”

She stood and slipped out of her gown. Underneath she had on a tan slip with white lace on the front, and putting one foot and then the other on the bench pulled back the slip to roll her nylons on. She snapped the tops into her garter belt and looking over her shoulder into the mirror asked “Are my seams straight, honey?”

I didn’t care about her seams, but before I even realized I wasn’t going to answer she sat down edgeways on the bench and said, “Will you come here to Momma a second, darlin’?

I sat next to her looking into her face. There was no one in the world besides us. Holding my cheeks in her soft paws she said “Darlin’, darlin’. Edgar is a good man. He puts food on the table and a roof over our heads. Your Daddy isn’t coming back, and your Momma needs some help. Can you try to understand that?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Then I said, “Do you have to go?”

I didn’t want to look at her. I didn’t want her to be beautiful. I didn’t want her to put on her blue dress and her veiled hat; Gramma’s cameo brooch and high heels. But she did. I stood up and went over to her bureau and pretended to straighten up her jewelry box, which was always a mess. Then she came over and put her arms around me pulled me close into her. I could feel her lips moving on my cheek; feel the warmth of her breath on my ear.

“We’ll back before you know it. Then we’ll celebrate with our first dinner together as a real family.”

Her breath smelled like a warm peppermint breeze. I looked down and dragged my stocking toe in the powder that had dusted the floor. I started to think again about ways that I could hurt Edgar. I heard the V-8 rumble of my Dad’s Ford outside. I shuffled on powdered socks across the hardwood floor to the bay window and looked out through the sheers. Edgar was standing outside the car door awkwardly suited in a black jacket and tan chinos. He had a tie on and looking up toward the window hollered “Come on Marie! Get your ass down here!”

Mom came over to the window next to me and looked out.

“Isn’t he handsome?”

Then she was gone, and all that was there was the smell of apple blossoms and peppermint. I put my hand up and wiped her kiss from my cheek.

The fighting got worse after they got married. Mostly about money. They both drank hard; it was like gas on a fire. You never knew what kind of a deal you’d be coming home to. The one thing that I was most afraid of was coming home and finding Mom and Edgar; you know, doing it. Dean told me that he came home early one day from work and saw Edgar screwing Mom on the living room couch and he couldn’t even tell who was who. I mean, what if I walked in the house and heard moaning coming from their bedroom? Or worse, saw Mom and Edgar like Dean did, on the couch or in a chair? Gramma says that Mom was always a follower, even when she was a little girl she would always go along with the crowd. She never seemed like that to me. But I think Edgar talked her into it, doing something during the day, you know? He got off at two o’clock so he could be at the house before me or Dean, easy. Mom would be vacuuming or something, maybe ironing. She’d have the radio on listening to “Kelly in the Afternoon” on CKLW playing the Top 40 countdown, probably real loud, and he’d come sneaking up behind her and grab her. Of course she don’t put up much of a fight, maybe smacking him with a dish towel or something she’s ironing. And next thing you know – he’s feeling her up and that’s that. The very thought turned my stomach.

The days I liked the best she’d be sitting at the kitchen table when I got home from doing papers, her artists smock spotted with the oils and dyes she used to color photographs. Portraits in black and white or sepia; 5 x 7’s and 8 x 10’s on heavy paper of businessmen and families, babies and brides that wanted hand coloring instead of the harsh commercial color prints.

I loved to sit down next to her and watch as she tinted the clothes and faces of the people I would never know with touches of cotton swabs, a saucer for her pallet. She had a deal with C. P. Kenney, a photographer up on Woodward Avenue to do these prints. Fifty cents for the small ones; a dollar each for the 8 x 10’s. It was nowhere near the dough she made working the line for Ford at the Rouge transmission plant, but since she got laid off, doing these prints was all she had to supplement the measly allowance that Edgar gave her.

Other days I’d come home and she would be sitting in front of the TV with the sound off, a cigarette burnt down to the filter in her fingers, just staring at whatever was on in a defeated trance. Dean never called Mom anything but Marie after she married Edgar. It was like she wasn’t anything special to him then. Me, I couldn’t do that, even though I mostly went along with Dean in other stuff. Those days Dean would just walk on by, but I would sit down next to her, not saying anything at first, just listening to her as she told me over and over, “I’m such a failure, Mason. I don’t know how Edgar puts up with me.” Then I’d try to say something to cheer her up; to make her smile or laugh. Mostly all I could think of were lies; that Miss Costigan had picked me for the safety patrol, or that my art project won first prize and was to be on the front table for Open House, (which was a pretty safe lie because I was sure she wouldn’t come) or stupid jokes (How do you know if an elephant is in the bathtub with you? You can smell the peanuts on his breath.) but I told them anyway. Even at those times, or maybe especially at those times, I could coax a smile out from behind her tears. I loved her laugh; it was smart and interesting. It told me that really, she was OK, that her tears were no matter if I was there to tell her a dumb joke, to lean up against her and just be there.

Edgar was tons worse. One day me and Dean found him passed out naked on the couch with his .357 in his hand. You know what we thought at first, but no such luck.
My heart was pounding.

“Is he dead, Dean?”

“Do you see any blood? Come on Mace. He’s just fucked up. Don’t touch him. Just let Marie find him. He’s her man.”

We had to get by him to go to our room. I tried not to look at him as I walked by first, but it was like seeing a wreck on the expressway; you don’t want to look but somehow you have to. He was slumped down, his chin hanging on his skinny chest. His ankles were crossed, his knees open, his left hand cupped over his balls.

“Fuck, Dean. He’s got a boner.”

“He’s probably got to pee.”

That big ass Smith and Wesson Model 27 was in his right hand, palm up. He was definitely drunk; Southern Comfort. I could smell it as soon as I walked in to the room, even before I saw the bottles. Dean stopped and stood over him. He took the revolver gently by the barrel and carefully unfolded Edgars fingers from around the checked wooden grip. He grunted a little, but didn’t move. Dean pushed the thumb slide and the cylinder dropped open. He tipped the gun back and six rounds slid out into his palm.

“I’m keeping these.” he said.

He put the revolver back in Edgars hand and we went on to our room. I know he was thinking about Marie. We knew Edgar he had slapped her, and Dean said that if he saw that one more time it would be “all over” for Edgar. No way were we going to let her get shot.

Whatever we did, we had to get out of Detroit. That was our life’s goal. “It’s you and me Mace.” Dean would say. “Wait a couple years until you’re seventeen, then we’ll join the Navy together. I’ll get Marie to sign off for you.” So we had that to look forward to. I would imagine it sometimes; the two of us in Dress Whites, standing on the deck of a battleship in the ranks of sailors, our scarves flying in the wind and our bell bottoms blowing slightly to reveal our black oxfords. And I would be standing there at parade rest next to Dean, not even remembering all this, as if how that could have ever happened to us?

Besides the Navy, we most often talked about California, or Florida, where our grandparents lived. We talked about hitchhiking to Florida and living with Pops while we got jobs on fishing boats or a marina. We would sit in our room at night and talk for hours, making up the names of the boats we’d work on. Saying what kind of cars we’d buy when we got rich. I figured I’d have a ‘Vette, which Dean always made fun of. “That’s not a real sports car.” He said. Not like my Austin-Healy.” Our window looked out on the Davidson; cars were going by on the overpass, over the warehouses and garages, the billboards and the junk cars dead in the alleys below. There weren’t any ‘Vettes or Healy’s. It was all so dingy and sad looking. Mostly it seemed like that none of that could ever be possible. Honest to God, sometimes I think that you’d be better off if you were never been born.

There’s pictures in my science book of the night that show just rivers of stars in the sky. Miss Costigan said that each of those little pinpoints of light were whole galaxies. So I guess if that’s possible, anything is. Then I got to thinking about some of the other things Miss Costigan had told me at school. Life itself, she would tell me, was my main job. I had to live it until it was gone; to pay attention to it, go out into it and be there in the good or bad; stand up and let it batter me, pound me, wake up and look at it, really look at it or I would miss the whole thing. She was right. I didn’t want to get to be old and go, like, what the fuck was that?

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Author: hsderkin

H. Scott Derkin, winner of the prestigious Delizon Publishers Annual Short Story Competition in 2013 lives and works in Toledo, Ohio with his wife Carol and a scruffy miniature poodle mix named Dylanbob. By not taking in to account his shortcomings, Carol has managed to stay with him for 48 years. Derkin pursues his livelihood there in a prosaic trade. He may be found summers at the helm of his sailboat, making passage around the islands of western Lake Erie; and in the time not taken up by working, writing and sailing, Derkin might be found playing drums and recording blues, country and rock & roll music with his friends.
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